Sermon for the 7 th Sunday after Trinity, July 18, 2010
“ For when ye were the servants of sin, ye were free from righteousness. What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed? for the end of those things is death. But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life . ”
WHAT MAKES your life valuable? What can be used as a gauge to measure a man or a woman? Many such scales have been suggested. If it were your funeral , how many friends would come to pay their respects? And how many would shed a tear ? If a surprise birthday party were being thrown for you, how many would travel a real distance just to sing Happy Birthday? For some, it's an election for a public office and obtaining a majority of votes. For others, it's just the number of people who love you. And still for others, it's how many people you love.
What are the fruits of your life? Are these things you have produced, worthy for others to receive and to add to their own lives? Or are your fruits simply the things you have consumed along the way ? Are you the kind of person who takes everything in , or gives it out? That is an important distinction between people. For some the winner is the one who dies with the most toys. For others, it's who has given the most people joy.
We are a consumer society. Consider the millions spent every day on advertising in our nation. The ad section of your Sunday paper is three times as thick and heavy as the news, isn't it? And the colorful splashy photos of things you should want, and of happy people enjoying them are all geared to attract your attention and move you to buy. Consider what a minute of commercial air time costs for a televised national sports event like the All Star game, and you know where our values are. And what was being advertised?
As a consumer society, our values have been shaded toward acquisition . We want more and more electronic gear, iPods and electronic books and all-terrain vehicles and Lite beer and Pop Tarts and Nike athletic shoes. The lines leaving Costco every day with giant plasma TVs tell of our purchasing patterns as well as how we spend our time. What is TV anyway but a means of consuming entertainment in massive doses and doing nothing , let alone producing nothing.
Jesus talked about fruit, good and bad, that distinguishes a good tree from a bad one. People may talk all they want about themselves, but examine the fruit , says our Lord, and see whether this is a tree you want in your orchard, or just dig it up and burn it. For Him, it isn't just a matter of being in the neatly ordered rows of trees, or even of producing any sort of fruit on your branches, but what kind of fruit is it that your life has created as the goal and end product of your life? For our Lord, fruit is an awfully important gauge of measuring our lives for their value. What are those fruits? What kinds of things is He looking for?
First of all, it's good fruit. Sin is disobedience to God and His ways. Righteousness is living according to His design . Sin is evil fruit and living right produces good fruit, such as “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control,” as St. Paul writes to the Galatians. 5:22-23 And not only is it the fruit in ourselves, but in others. Our lives should inspire the same righteousness in those who are around us. Those who know us should be encouraged to live a little like we do, for in fact we do influence others, for good or for ill. We are all commercials for the lives we lead . How many people's lives are lived better for your having been in them? The fruit of influence is important, for when such fruit as various sexual immoralities, setting other things before God, witchcraft, hatred, arguments, jealousies, shouting matches, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, drug dependence, and the like,” Gal 5:10-21 are the example you live; your children, your friends and neighbors and relations may all fall to the same failings through your weakness portrayed before them.
Salvation has been seen in the Post Reformation age as the only fruit worthy of mention , for all other accomplishments or signs of piety are mere pride and works , attempting to earn God's favor . Jesus did it all. His grace alone is our way to heaven. Nothing we do may add anything to it . But this is not Scriptural. Jesus said much about the way we live our lives, as did St. Paul, as the measure of who we are and how we will be rewarded, or punished. Mere grace simply will not cover the lies, treachery, thieving and greedy habits and spiritual assaults that some “ Christians ” still practice and lead others into while relying on grace and God's forgiveness. Jesus found a fruitless fig tree on a day that He was hungry, and finding its branches empty His judgment fell.
Now, perfection is not a place we've left behind us, a state we can never achieve again because we've blown it and our character, our very nature has been skewed by our failings of the past. Perfection has never been ours, in fact, for we were born ruined, the flawed products of a fallen world. God knows this. He knows that our finest deeds are imperfect. He set a new standard in His relationship with Abraham, who “believed in the Lord , and He accounted it to him for righteousness.” Gen 15:6 This was a significant exchange, and it set up the true path of salvation that would be fulfilled in the Seed of Abraham, that One who was sent to bless every family of humankind in every age. For the Law only brought us to our knees, begging forgiveness and God's patience with us as we struggle to be as good as He has commanded us to be. The commandments still stand, and His standard is unabated, but we look at the people He most favored and find in them certainly some flaws: Moses, Samuel, David, Elijah, Daniel, Esther, and even Mary and Joseph. It isn't their perfection God sees that brings His approval, but their faith . Their eyes and hearts never stray from Him, even when they've fallen down. And they never lie about their sins before Him. Their repentance is outspoken and real and truly changes them.
Then they do something. They don't just receive the grace . They are not spiritual consumers , like American Christians following the ads for church services here and there, checking out sermon titles in the paper and thinking where Sunday might be spent to my liking. The yellow page feature ad with the big photo of a pastor, the TV spot with all the happy faces—I wonder what God thinks of advertising churches. But my point isn't the ads , it's the consumers . Go to a mega-church, maybe any church , and ask a sampling of those in their padded pews what they want to do as volunteers for their church. The vast number interviewed have said they don't want to do anything but come and watch and listen. The kids have a good program. The music is good. I like the messages—they're short. And we don't have to dress up.
I am saddened by the American idea of Christian life. As a Christian country— as we are viewed by the world, and certainly there is a greater percentage of our population claiming Christianity than most other countries —the fruit of our witness on earth is explicitly sexual music, massive drug addictions, street violence, anti-depressants, serial marriages and divorce, abortions, new age religion and witchcraft, and a growing dependence on governmental support and control. Our Fruit .
Christ's answer is Christ Himself. He is not , however, a panacea , a wonder drug you just take and presto ! You're okay with heaven , just show up . The Christ we seem to want is smiling at us, feeding us, winking and comforting us into a sweet slumber. St. John wrote there are many anti-christs in the world . A Christ who tells you not to sweat it, not to try and live a godly life before Him , bearing good fruits to Him is not Jesus Christ, the Son of God , but the son of another lesser god. Every single parable of Jesus Christ tells us this fact, and the tares go up in smoke.
The answer Christ gives us is to die to yourself, first . This is unpleasant. There's no way to dress it up and make it sound like a Starbuck's mocha frappaccino. It's death . There are things we've become attached to that we used to see as our due, our reward for breathing, which have to go. There is a person inside of us called the flesh or sin nature, who must be denied food, water, air, time and, for heaven's sake, entertainment . This death is symbolized by our baptism, whereby we cut ourselves off from Egypt, the old enslavement, and then we go onto the desert. “Pick up your crosses and follow me.” This language that the real Jesus uses is intentional. We're supposed to know it will be hard. What kind of heaven would yield itself and its rewards to ten billion spiritual couch potatoes? It is hard. And we're not good at it. No matter . The faith by which we took it up has won God's favor, and His Holy Spirit in us keeps us strong, lets us know our missteps, and encourages us to continue.
It's not all desert. The Promised Land, our life after this one, is not the only reward. But the cookies are not all on the lowest shelf either, as I've heard it said in newer church models. And they don't look much like cookies, either. Our tastes are being changed, and the wafer at our Communion has no chocolate chips or cinnamon bursts, and is in fact pretty tasteless, as our physical senses go. There are other senses being nurtured in us, a sense of satisfaction after working hard, giving all, seeing good fruit planted and growing, and watching the harvest come in for God's kingdom that fills the empty hole in us, a hole that no amount of cake or cars or careers could ever fill. The fruits of a simple, generous, loving friend far exceed the fame and fortune of a selfish movie star or recording artist. It's not all desert . When our tastes have been reoriented, and our values reordered, the win column begins to show us where real pleasure is meant to be experienced.
The roads around Butte County are dotted with fruit stands offering seasonal produce from our many farms: strawberries, cherries, peaches, plums, apricots, heirloom tomatoes and fresh aromatic herbs. Your own fruit stand is offering the world a taste of your farm, the full yield of your life's product, the true and lasting value that either justifies God's creation of you, or His judgment. What is on the table? May we sample one? Are they ripe? Are they organic? Did you grow all these yourself? My goodness, you have a nice fruit stand.
PFH+